News, Conflict and Environment as Social Constructions

Using an innovative approach that encompasses perspectives from media studies, political ecology and political ecology, Pinto, Prado and Tirado examine the body of literature that views the connections between environment and society. With a particular focus on Latin America, the chapter provides a much-needed overview of environment, news and protest as social constructions. Mediated discourse surrounding environmental debate provides an opportunity to explore how local protest is scaled up to national and global levels, or marginalized and prevented from entering public sphere debate. As well as looking at the literature informing the book’s conceptual approach, the chapter also explains the methodology employed here, which encompasses both qualitative and quantitative content analysis, as well as dozens of interviews with the journalists who reported the news.